Some Thoughts On Who's Watching Us

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As it happens, I drove back to the Commonwealth (God save it!) from Our Nation's Capital yesterday, taking the long route north that Robert E. Lee took through Maryland and Pennsylvania, rather than subject myself to the bent-fender carnage I'd seen on the Jersey Turnpike on the way down the night before. Given that I had a lot of time on the trip to D.C. in which I was pretty much motionless — Yes, I was travelling through one of the most densely populated parts of the country on one of the worst travel days of the year, and yes, I am an idiot. What was your point, exactly? — I noticed that an awful lot of technology is watching over us these days.

For example, I was unaware of the phenomenon of paperless tolls. A few years ago, I went full EZ-Pass. I decided that having the Illuminati Masonic New World Order made aware every time I drove to Fenway was less of a hassle than waiting for 20 minutes at the Allston tolls because some teenager driving Daddy's SUV couldn't find a quarter under all the empties in the front seat. So, no harm, no foul for me there. I asked into whatever databases there are that work off the EZ Pass. But this paperless toll thing, where your drive on through and they send you a bill, this was new to me. Obviously, somehow, the system takes down your license plate, cross-matches it with your address, and send out the invoice for $4.00 or whatever. Then, there were the signs as I came into southern Maryland that warned "Aggressive Driver Imaging. For Your Protection." This apparently involves shooting frickin' laser beams around the highway. This makes me nervous. After all, I saw Goldfinger.

The system uses lasers to determine the range and speed of vehicles on the highway. It then uses a computer system to record video images of the front, side, and rear of a vehicle when the vehicle's measured speed exceeds a predetermined threshold. The information can be quickly assembled into a violation report to be sent to the vehicle owner. A manual override allows the operator to manually trigger the acquisition of video data in order to capture other aggressive driving patterns such as following too closely and erratic lane changes.

Remember when, if you were driving like a jackass, the friendly state trooper would appear in your rear-view with his pretty red lights revolving, and you got a lesson in big government right there by the side of the thruway while he ran your plates, and you sat there feeling like a perp while people sailed by blowing their horns? Not any more, chief. The trooper doesn't even have to start his cruiser. At some point, he may not even have to leave his house.

Data is saved on a removable disk and subsequently used to generate violation reports that can be analyzed or mailed to the owner of the vehicle. The operator can review any and all data on the computer monitor.

Yes. it's banal. And yes, it's "for our own good." (Come to think of it, that rationale is pretty banal, too.) Yes, in the abstract, at least, it's apparently benign. But it does raise the question of what else is watching us — the "who" is increasingly beside the point, as the technology grows more sophisticated and subtle — and for what purpose, and where does the data gathered on every second of our lives eventually reside?

(Case in point: The blog's editor was driving from Key West to Fort Lauderdale two years ago in a rental car. A few weeks later, she got a letter from ATS Processing Services with a $150 fine for not coming to a complete stop before turning right on red. Remembering no flash from a camera, she was so convinced it was another renter — until she flipped to the last page of photos to one zoomed in on her and a friend laughing in the front seat.)

The gradual surrender of our rights of individual privacy to our expanding technologies is continuing apace. Unlike the more direct abridgments that have become sadly commonplace — warrantless searches, drug testing without cause — there are no actual human agencies at which to rail. There isn't anybody to take to court. This makes these abridgments all the more chilling for being so soulless and covert. (Our faith in our technology is occasionally cult-like.) Rearranging the essential relationship between human beings and the institutions that increasingly control their lives ought not to be something you can do from your living room. It should take some actual human effort to operate the minor infrastructure of a surveillance state. If your job is spying on your fellow citizens, for whatever reason, you should at least have to get up from behind your desk and do it. It should not be something that happens in the underbrush by the side of the road.